Of course, it is that time of the year. Apple, Qualcomm, MediaTek and now Samsung will have 10nm SoCs ready for phones in early 2017. Of course Samsung wants to use its own 10nm SoC in the Galaxy S8 that is expected in late February 2017, but probably with a mix of 10nm Snapdragon too.

Samsung’s next generation Exynos’ name is very uninspired. You don’t call your much better chip just the Exynos 8895, but that might not be the final name.

The Korean giant went from Exynos 7420 for Galaxy S5 and first 14nm for Android followed a year after with Exynos 8890 still 14nm but witha custom Exynos M1 "Mongoose" plus Cortex-A53eight core combination.

The new SoC is rumored to come with a 4GHz clock. The same leak suggests that the Snapdragon 830 can reach 3.6 GHz which would be quite an increase from the 2.15Ghz that the company gets with the Snapdragon 820. Samsung’s Exynos 8890 stops at 2.6GHz with one or two cores running while it drops to 2.3 GHz when three of four cores from the main cluster run. Calls us sceptics for this 4GHz number as it sounds like quite a leap from the previous generation.

Let us remind ourselves that the clock speed is quite irrelevant as it doesn't mean anything, and is almost as irrelevant as an Antutu score. It tells you the maximal clock of a SoC but you really want to know the performance per watt or how much TFlops you can expect in the best case. A clock speed without knowing the architecture is insufficient to make any analysis. We've seen in the past that 4GHz processors were slower than 2.5GHz processors.

The fact that Samsung continued to use Snapdragon 820 for its latest greatest Galaxy Note 7 means that the company still needs Qualcomm and we don’t think this is going to change anytime soon. Qualcomm traditionally has a better quality modem tailored well for USA, China, Japan and even the complex Europe or the rest of the world.

Meizu's CEO Huang Zhang a well-known info leaker has shared a picture of a curved Meizu phone that is expected later this year.

We don't have much specific information other than the picture of the device which Huang shared. One can always put on the imagination hat and assume that this is going to be a bigger and more powerful version of just announced Meizu 6 Pro powered with MediaTek's Helio X25.

Usually there is a bigger screen phone with Samsung Exynos processor and many news outlets are suggesting that there might be an edge curved phone with Exynos 8890 coming. A previously leaked roadmap that was proved somewhat accurate indicated that there is a Exynos 8890 phone with 1440 display resolution, a 5.7 inch Super Amoled screen, UFS 3.0, mTouch 3.1, HiFi 3.0, and a 3500 mAh battery.

Meizu confused the market announcing the Meizu 6 Pro with a 5.2 screen and a Helio X25. Usually the Pro version came with a 5.7 inch screen and Exynos SoCs. The Meizu 6 Pro has Helio X25 clocked at 2.5 GHz, 4GB of RAM, 5.2 inch super Amoled 1080p screen and 32 or 64GB storage.

It looks like market has reacted well to a curved screen and the Galaxy Edge and now players including Vivo, Meizu and probably a few more want to take advantage of a bit rounded screen that makes your phone stand out from similar looking devices.

The first benchmarks of the Meizu Pro 6 have surfaced with Gizchina testing it against the Samsung Note 5 with Exynos 7420 and the 2016 Oppo R9 Plus with the Snapdragon 652.

The title didn't mention that the Oppo R9 Plus, powered by Snapdragon 652 is a 2016 product and is currently the only Cortex-A72 based SoC to ship side-by-side with MediaTek's Helio X25. It deserved its place in the comparison.

All phones were tested with Antutu benchmark 6.1.3, Geekbench and 3D Mark. In two out of three Helio X25 came in tops. Samsung Galaxy Note 5 scored 84449, OPPO R9 Plus scored 83928 while the Meizu Pro 6 scored 100159. Last time we checked, the Snapdragon 820 powered phones scored more than 133.000.

In the Geekbench test, the Samsung Galaxy Note 5 with Exynos 7420 scored 1487 in the single core mode and OPPO R9 Plus with Snapdragon 652 scored 1512 in the single core mode and 5190 in multi-core mode. The Meizu Pro 6 with Helio X25 scored 1925 in the single core mode and 6550 in multi-core mode. The winner was the Meizu Pro 6 with Helio X25 as it manages to outperform even the Snapdragon 820 powered LG G5 in the multi-core test. The LG G5 scored 2348 in single core test, where it beat the Helio X25 and 5412 which lost to the LG G5 and Snapdragon 820.

In the 3Dmark test Mali-T760MP8 from Exynos 7420 won with 1205, eight cores definitely do better job than the Helio X25 with Mali-T880MP4 four cores. Snapdragon 652 with Adreno 510 finished last. Meizu Pro 6 looks like a decent performer, but it will be a while before customers in Europe, US, Australia, or anywhere outside of China get their hands on one.

The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn which suggests that Samsung is going to be producing a separate Exynos 8870 chipset which is meant to be sold to other handset manufacturers such as Meizu.

Meizu is an obvous choice to try such a chip. The outfit has a history of using Samsung’s latest Exynos chips in its handsets, but this will be better than the chip used in devices like the Galaxy S6, Galaxy S6 edge and Galaxy Note 5. While the Exynos 8870 is predicted to be a high-end chip it will have a lower clock speed than the Exynos 8890.

The guess is that the new chip will be first seen in the Meizu PRO 6 and the Meizu PRO 6 mini as the first devices to feature the Exynos 8870. But more companies will join in. BlackBerry has been named in some reports as testing an Exynos 7420 chip in their handsets about a month ago.

The Exynos 8870 is a slightly downgraded version of the Exynos 8890 it could lead to cost effective devices with good battery life. But if the company gets enough contracts together it is going to create some serious headaches for Qualcomm.

There have been quite a few rumors regarding Samsung's next Galaxy flagship smartphone and the latest one suggest that Samsung might equip the Galaxy S7 with high-end ESS SABRE 9018AQ2M audio chip.

The upcoming Samsung Galaxy S7 flagship has been heavily rumored recently, including the fact that we might see it announced as early as January and that it might be available in three different version with three different SoCs, including Samsung's own Exynos 8890 and Exynos 7422 and Qualcomm's Snapdragon 820. The rest of the rumors include the all new 20-megapixel ISOCELL camera, USB Type-C connector, 5.2-inch and 5.7-inch versions with up to 4K/UHD resolution, magnesium frame and glass front and back and plenty of other rumors like the curved screen.

The latest rumor coming from MyDrivers and spotted by Phonearena.com is also quite interesting as it suggests that the Galaxy S7 might end up with a high-end digital-to-analog converter (DAC), no other than high-end ESS SABRE 9018AQ2M, currently one of the best audio chips for mobile applications.

Samsung has been using Wolfson DACs in its smartphones and while these are not bad, high-end ESS chip could make a difference. Samsung might partner up with Jay-Z's Tidal music service which stream loss-less high-fidelity tunes, so a high-end ESS chip could be the one play it all.

Judging from all these rumors, Samsung is definitely aiming to create a proper flagship smartphone with the Galaxy S7 and hopefully we will hear more about it soon.

Samsung's Exynos 7240 is a little miracle, and being the first mobile 14nm SoC in the market has its own benefits.

Having only a SoC doesn’t help much, as you also need to have an LTE-capable modem in order to become a player in European and US markets. Some parts of Asia still don’t need LTE, but it is becoming more relevant there, too. This goes hand in hand with the future-proof concept, whereby customers want a phone that will last and will get them access to LTE when it becomes available in their countries. There is no doubt that the Exynos 7240 with 14nm, octa-core and DDR4 memory support is quite a nice chip, but what about the modem?

According to industry sources, the Exynos Modem 333 was in development for more than seven years. Samsung has gathered a lot of LTE engineers in San Diego labs and started working on this project. As you can see, it took them years to develop a modem that the company calls Exynos 300 series.

The San Diego labs got the necessary qualification for Samsung's LTE modem in many countries, but we hear that that might be a Galaxy S6 version with a Qualcomm modem inside too. The Cat 6 modem that works together with the new Exynos is 2014 technology. Qualcomm has a Cat 10 modem ready, as this is the latest and greatest standard shipping to customers. It is called Qualcomm Gobi 9x45 and it is based on the second-generation 20nm node. The Qualcomm modem offers up to 450Mbps Downlink 3x Carrier Aggregation and up to 100Mbps Uplink 2x Carrier Aggregation, and can be considered the most advanced modem around.

The fact that the Exynos 300 series modem was developed in San Diego is no surprise. San Diego is the headquarters of Qualcomm and one can imagine that most of the Exynos LTE modem people came from Qualcomm.

Last week at the Mobile World Congress 2015 Qualcomm demonstrated Cat 11 modem with 600Mbit download speeds, while the Exynos 300 series modem can deal with LTE Category 6 download speeds of up to 300Mbps. This is not something you could see at the Galaxy 6 press event, and definitely not something that Samsung wants advertised.

There is no doubt that the Samsung 300 series modem with Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge will do just fine, especially considering that at best most world LTE provides support Cat 4 LTE speeds up to 150Mbps, and end customers usualy cannot come close to these speeds. Still it won't be the world's best modem with support for the latest standards.

We found out one rather interesting story at the Mobile World Congress and it sheds more light on Samsung's decision to use Exynos SoCs for most markets instead of Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810.

It turns out that the Exynos 7240 was manufactured in 14nm and that going with octa-core with four Cortex-A57 and four Cortex-A53 was an incredibly huge risk. Samsung had a nice run with 20nm parts for the Galaxy Note 4 that used an in-house Exynos 5433 SoC in many markets. This was the world's first Android based 20nm SoC that used Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores. Samsung used 20nm Exynos 5433 for some markets, while most other markets like the US were covered by the Snapdragon 805 with a Cat 6 LTE modem.

We also learned that Snapdragon 810 will also ship in some Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge phones because of its modem technology advantage over Samsung's Exynos. It all depends on the market.

Many industry figures expected that Samsung would announce two versions of the Galaxy S6, one with Exynos for a few small markets, and the other version for most of the world with Snapdragon 810.

What happened is that 14nm yields for Exynos 7240 were significantly better than Samsung or anyone else in the industry expected. This includes Qualcomm, Intel, TSMC - you name it - and people still cannot believe that Samsung recovered so well from disastrous 20nm yields in its fabs. This is the reason why Samsung decided that most of its Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge should ship with Exynos and a smaller number with Snapdragon 810 SoCs.

The 14nm Exynos 7240 uses Cortex-A57 and Cortex-A53 cores and delivers a slight increase in speed that got up from 1.9GHz with Exynos 5433 to 2.1GHz for A57 cores and from 1.3GHz to 1.5GHz on A53 cores. At the same time 14nm means that Samsung needs less power to run the chip, while reaping more performance.

So despite the fact that Samsung is a huge and important player, they were essentially lucky with Exynos 7240 its good yields on 14nm. Qualcomm is working hard to release Snapdragon 820 and challenge Samsung's new chip. The fact that Samsung relies on the plain Cortex design from ARM will probably cost it leadership in the near future, as in 2015 some of the big boys have custom, in-house CPU cores.

We remembered that Nvidia's Jen-Hsung Huang said that the company could not get into Apple or Samsung and that they could only play in other market niches, and guess what - he was right about that. Bottom line - Apple, Qualcomm and Nvidia do custom cores, while Samsung, Hisilicon and MediaTek still rely on reference ARM cores.

Samsung has just officially announced the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge phones. Both phones share the same DNA and the only difference is that the S6 Edge has a dual-side curved screen.

Samsung is finally done making plastic flagships, so a new metal and Gorilla Glass 4 design debuts with this generation, and we have to admit that this is the best looking Samsung Galaxy S ever. In the process Samsung has killed off removable battery, as well as the microSD expansion slot. We can live without a removable battery, but we think that ditching microSD is lame move, since many Samsung fans are quite fond of expandable storage.

14nm Exynos, LPDDR4, faster storage

The phone is powered by an eight-core 64-bit Exynos processor that should offer 20 percent higher performance than the 20nm Exynos 5433 in the Note 4. At the same time, the new 14nm octa-core should also offer 35 percent lower power consumption. Four out of eight cores works at 2.1GHz, and the remaining four work at 1.5GHz. The phones come with 3GB RAM, but that's not all.

Samsung is using LPDDR4 memory, as well as Universal Storage 2.0 that is a bridge technology between SSD and eMMC storage. The universal storage uses less power too, while offering superior storage performance. LPDDR4 should end up about 60 percent faster than previous DDR3-class chips.

The display is a 5.1-Quad HD, 2560x1440 Super AMOLED with 577 ppi and the main difference is that the screen pm the Edge version is warped at the edges. The S6 has 77 percent more pixels than the S5 and Samsung rolled out a new Galaxy Gear VR virtual reality set too. The set is compabile with both phones.

Since the screen is smaller than on the Note 4, you get an 11-percent increase in pixel density, and this should boost display quality on the new Gear VR.

Supercharged battery and new f/1.9 cameras

Samsung claims that its enhanced processor offers 12 hours on battery life on wireless, 11 hours on LTE, 13 hours watching movies and 49 hours of music playback. When it comes to charging, Samsung also claims faster than any battery in the industry today. The company said that it takes only 10 minutes to get enough power for an additional 4 hours of everyday use. The Galaxy S6 charges from 0 to 100 percent in half as much time as the iPhone 6. Sounds impressive, but let's wait and see.

The battery is built in, and so is the Wireless charging that supports both WPC and PMA standards. The phone is 6.8 millimetres thick and the 16-megapixel camera can record 4K. The camera protrudes out of the body, but there are a few redeeming features, such as a speedy f/1.9 aperture, optical image stabilisation (OIS), as well as some cool camera software features. The front-facing 5-megapixel camera also features a fast f/1.9 lens, but that's not all. Pixel count is not everything - the camera uses a 43 percent bigger sensor. Coupled with the faster lens, the sensor captures much better images in low light. The same goes for the main camera, as it delivers superior quality compared to previous Galaxy models, and the iPhone 6 Plus.

As usual, TouchWiz sits on top of Android 5.0 Lollipop, but the Samsung skin has been redesigned and looks better, but we only saw what Samsung wanted to show us. It looks like a major TouchWiz overhaul, but we need to see more. The curved screen S6 Edge is not just for show, as it offers fast access to contacts and other functions, and a few other nifty features.

The phone comes in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB and it will be available in 20 countries on the April 10th slightly less than six weeks from now. Both phones looks better than the S5, but it's really the hardware that stands out. If Samsung prices the phones at normal rate, both could be a huge success. We do like the Samsung Pay, that sounds like something that can by popular among other Android users too.

Fudzilla has found out that the Samsung Galaxy S6 will be one of the first devices to boast a non-Intel chip build around a 14nm process.

The Exynos 7420 SoC will be a 14nm octa-core, with four Cortex-A57 cores and four slower Cortex-A53 cores. Most of the chips coming in 2015 will use ARM's big.LITTLE approach, but in 20nm. Samsung Exynos 7420 is 14nm and is also using Mali-T760 GPU. We have the manufacturing node confirmed by multiple sources but you only need to wait for the March 1 to see the official announcement at the Mobile World Congress Galaxy S6 launch event.

Qualcomm's Snapdragon 810 was the main candidate for the Galaxy S6, since Qualcomm has the best LTE modem on the market. However, Samsung pulled out from using the chip, sparking rumours that it was overheating. However it turns out that Samsung is simply happier with what it had in-house, and therefore decided to use the Exynos 7420 14nm octa-core instead. There is a chance that Samsung might use an external chip from Qualcomm, just as Apple does for iPhones.

The fact that Exynos 7420 SoC is 14nm means a few things. Samsung / GlobalFoundries 14nm manufacturing is in better shape than most people expected, as the Galaxy 6 is expected to sell in tens of millions of units this year. This is not some risk production 14nm for a low-volume phone that will sell in hundreds of thousands. Samsung trust its manufacturing capabilities with its best-selling, flagship phone.

Samsung is beating both Apple and Intel to market with a smartphone 14nm SoC. Apple is expected to use 14nm A8 with the new iPhone / iPads, but this traditionally happens in September / October. We expect to see Intel 14nm SoC showcased at Mobile World Congress but we are not sure who will use it. Intel had trouble getting high profile mobile phone manufactures interested in its smartphone technology.

From what we can see in early benchmarks, the 14nm Exynos 7420 won't be much faster than the 20nm Exynos 5433 predecessor in any tests except in 3D. It turns out that you can expect more than 20 percent faster graphics and significantly faster runtime test in AnTuTu. The 14nm SoC should be good in terms of battery life too, as 14nm should need 35 percent less energy to work at the same clocks. Samsung is promising that its 14nm LPE (Low Power Enhanced) manufacturing process can give some 20 percent of performance increase compared to 20nm SoCs.

The 2015 will be an interesting year for phones as Samsung has a new weapon and the rest of the industry has to rely on Snapdragon 810 or MediaTek processors for 2015 performance and high end phones.

Samsung is trying to make a GPU for years and enter this already crowded GPU IP market. Qualcomm uses Adreno, Nvidia uses Geforce and wants to license it to others. Apple uses PowerVR while Mediatek uses ARM owed Mali graphics for newer processors while using PowerVR for some older parts. Intel is using PowerVR G6430 for its mobile processors such as Atom Z3580 Moorefield while AMD has its own graphics that it can use for future SoCs and APUs. Intel owns Intel HD graphics that dominates the integrated CPU market especially for notebooks.

Samsung currently uses Mali graphics but this might change. If its team is successful, it might come with its own graphics and jack them under the bonnet of its own Exynos processor by the next summer.

Samsung is trying to get into Nvidia space and the company doesn’t like it. Even if Samsung manages to make a successful GPU, the competition is hard. Even with years of trying Samsung is mostly using Exynos for its own tablets and some phones. Most Samsung high end phones use Qualcomm Snapdragons as these tend to have better LTE modems and are widely available.

According to the Korean ZDnet the company might talk about the GPU as early as February at the Solid Circuits Society (ISSCC) conference with the official announcement scheduled for summer 2015.